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Rant n Rave: Different Lifestyles and Mega Milestones

Rants:

I fre­quent the /r/financialindependence sub­red­dit pret­ty much every day. I love the com­mu­ni­ty and sense of cama­raderie that comes from oth­er peo­ple on the same weird track as me. It’s real­ly great to be able to com­mis­er­ate about for­get­ting your lunch or cel­e­brat­ing sav­ings mile­stones. But.

(there’s always a but)

I know of no real del­i­cate way to say this, so I’ll just put it blunt­ly. Some peo­ple are way too crazy about cut­ting expens­es. I’m a big fan of not spend­ing friv­o­lous­ly and shop­ping smart. But I refuse to go to extremes. I don’t think the extra 2–3 years of extra inter­est is worth liv­ing in a car. That’s just me. Some peo­ple may be per­fect­ly fine with show­er­ing at work every day and only own­ing a lap­top, a pil­low and a week’s worth of clothes.

When I moved, I decid­ed to pay a bit extra for a 2 bed­room apart­ment. I did that so friends and fam­i­ly would have a place to sleep when they come to vis­it, and when they’re not here it’s my computer/craft room. Some peo­ple make look at me like I’m the crazy one for spend­ing the extra mon­ey every month.

My path to finan­cial inde­pen­dence and ear­ly retire­ment is not going to be marked by depri­va­tion and self-denial. (ok maybe a lit­tle bit of both. just a bit) I’m not going to be mis­er­able while I’m work­ing. I’ve got a life to live. There’s new peo­ple to meet and new places to explore. If that means I need to add a week­ly drink out at a bar to social­ize with my new team­mates, I’ll do it. Same with sav­ing up for fun vaca­tion trips. I’m only going to be young, sin­gle and rel­a­tive­ly mobile once. I think the youn­gins out there refer to that as “YOLO”.

Who knows? Maybe one of the peo­ple I meet out and about will turn into one of my clos­est friends, a busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty, or even a part­ner for life. I’m not going to miss out on that just to save $20.

Instead of ruth­less­ly cut­ting back my expens­es, I’m going to focus more on increas­ing my income. I have a feel­ing that will be far more use­ful down the road then a year of only spend­ing $5,000. Not spend­ing every pen­ny you earn is vital. Sav­ing what mon­ey you can is also impor­tant. Some time in the future though, you’re going to reach a point where the returns on the effort you put into cut­ting down your spend­ing would be bet­ter put to use earn­ing more mon­ey.

I’m not quite at the point where I want to put in the effort for a side hus­tle, so for now I’ll be focus­ing my efforts on sav­ing what I can.

Rave:

Speak­ing of sav­ing, I hit an impor­tant mile­stone this week. My invest­ments hit $50K!! They’ve actu­al­ly gone a bit over that with my 401k and Roth IRA con­tri­bu­tions added in from this last pay­check. I’m super excit­ed I’m able to share this with you. I’d love to cel­e­brate my news on Face­book, but I think most peo­ple would take it the wrong way and think I’m brag­ging. Or, even worse, ask me to help them out with some finan­cial issue.

How did I man­age to save so much in such a short time? Well, for one thing, I made it a pri­or­i­ty to save. When I first start­ed work­ing my first full-time job 18 months ago, I start­ed with a 6% 401k con­tri­bu­tion even though I des­per­ate­ly need­ed basic sup­plies. Like a mat­tress and kitchen stuff. I gave myself 4 months to buy what I need­ed to fur­nish my house, and then I bumped up my con­tri­bu­tion to what I thought was the full match. I made a mis­take in my cal­cu­la­tions, though, and includ­ed my employ­er match when I should’ve exclud­ed it. This led to me miss­ing out on about $5k which I’m kind of upset about still. From there, I caught my mis­take and bumped up my % to max out my 401k. Then I looked at my bud­get and decid­ed I could afford max­ing out my Roth IRA as well. Now I need to watch my spend­ing even more care­ful­ly but it’s worth it when I see my net worth graph climb high­er every month.

I also man­aged to save so much because I have zero debt. I worked my butt off for a full-ride schol­ar­ship to col­lege and joined the mil­i­tary for spend­ing cash. These two set me on the path to suc­cess more than any­thing else in my life. (Aside from my par­ents being good exam­ples, but don’t tell them I said that.)

My next goal is to have $100k net worth before I move on to my next job in 17 months. Bar­ing any major cat­a­stro­phes in my life, I think I should be able to hit that this time next year (mid-July 2016). I’ll let you know then if I made it or not! Life is look­ing pret­ty good for me right now!